10.Describe the economic forces which were drawing the East and the West together.
11.In what way was the South economically dependent upon the North?
12State the national policies generally favored in the North and condemned in the South.
13.Show how economic conditions in the South were unfavorable to industry.
14.Give the Southern explanation of the antagonism between the North and the South.
THE PLANTING SYSTEM AND NATIONAL POLITICSJames Madison,the father of the federal Constitution,after he had watched for many days the battle royal in the national convention of 1787,exclaimed that the contest was not between the large and the small states,but between the commercial North and the planting South.From the inauguration of Washington to the election of Lincoln the sectional conflict,discerned by this penetrating thinker,exercised a profound influence on the course of American politics.It was latent during the "era of good feeling"when the Jeffersonian Republicans adopted Federalist policies;it flamed up in the contest between the Democrats and Whigs.Finally it raged in the angry political quarrel which culminated in the Civil War.
Slavery-North and South
The Decline of Slavery in the North.-At the time of the adoption of the Constitution,slavery was lawful in all the Northern states except Massachu-setts.There were almost as many bondmen in New York as in Georgia.New Jersey had more than Delaware or Tennessee,indeed nearly as many as both combined.All told,however,there were only about forty thousand in the North as against nearly seven hundred thousand in the South.Moreover,most of the Northern slaves were domestic servants,not laborers necessary to keep mills going or fields under cultivation.
There was,in the North,a steadily growing moral sentiment against the system.Massachusetts abandoned it in 1780.In the same year,Pennsylvania provided for gradual emancipation.New Hampshire,where there had been only a handful,Connecticut with a few thousand domestics,and New Jersey early followed these examples.New York,in 1799,declared that all children born of slaves after July 4of that year should be free,though held for a term as apprentices;and in 1827it swept away the last vestiges of slavery.So with the passing of the generation that had framed the Constitution,chattel servitude disappeared in the commercial states,leaving behind only such discriminations as disfranchisement or high property qualifications on colored voters.
The Growth of Northern Sentiment against Slavery.-In both sections of the country there early existed,among those more or less philosophically in-clined,a strong opposition to slavery on moral as well as economic grounds.In the constitutional convention of 1787,Gouverneur Morris had vigorously con-demned it and proposed that the whole country should bear the cost of abol-ishing it.About the same time a society for promoting the abolition of slavery,under the presidency of Benjamin Franklin,laid before Congress a petition that serious at-tention be given to the emancipation of "those unhappy men who alone in this land of free-dom are degraded into perpetual bondage."When Congress,acting on the recommenda-tions of President Jefferson,provided for the abolition of the foreign slave trade on January 1,1808,several Northern members joined with Southern members in condemning the system as well as the trade.Later,colonization societ-ies were formed to encourage the emancipa-tion of slaves and their return to Africa.JamesMadison was president and Henry Clay vicepresident of such an organization.
Henry Clay
The anti-slavery sentiment of which these were the signs was nevertheless confined to narrow circles and bore no trace of bitterness."We consider slavery your calamity,not your crime,"wrote a distinguished Boston clergyman to his Southern brethren,"and we will share with you the burden of putting an end to it.We will consent that the public lands shall be appropriated to this object....I deprecate everything which sows discord and exasperating sectional animosities."
Uncompromising Abolition.-In a little while the spirit of generosity was gone.Just as Jacksonian Democracy rose to power there appeared a new kind of anti-slavery doctrine-the dogmatism of the abolition agitator.For mild spec-ulation on the evils of the system was substituted an imperious and belligerent demand for instant emancipation.If a date must be fixed for its appearance,the year 1831may be taken when William Lloyd Garrison founded in Boston his an-ti-slavery paper,The Liberator.With singleness of purpose and utter contempt for all opposing opinions and arguments,he pursued his course of passionate denunciation.He apologized for having ever "assented to the popular but per-nicious doctrine of gradual abolition."He chose for his motto:"Immediate and unconditional emancipation!"He promised his readers that he would be "harsh as truth and uncompromising as justice";that he would not "think or speak or write with moderation."Then he flung out his defiant call:"I am in earnest-Iwill not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-and I will be heard....
